Rosalia de Castro, Padron - Spain
Posted by: Groundspeak Premium Member kallehaugerne
N 42° 44.333 W 008° 39.697
29T E 527697 N 4731874
A granite statue of famous and beloved galician poet Rosalia de Castro. The statue is located in front of the church: Santiago Apostol.
Waymark Code: WMHM2Q
Location: Galicia, Spain
Date Posted: 07/22/2013
Published By:Groundspeak Premium Member Marine Biologist
Views: 5

María Rosalía Rita de Castro (Galician pronunciation: [rosa'li.a ðe 'kast?o]; 24 February 1837 – 15 July 1885), was a Galician romanticist writer and poet.

Writing in the Galician language, after the Séculos Escuros (lit. Dark Centuries), she became an important figure of the Galician romantic movement, known today as the Rexurdimento ("renaissance"), along with Manuel Curros Enríquez and Eduardo Pondal. Her poetry is marked by saudade, an almost ineffable combination of nostalgia, longing and melancholy.

She married Manuel Murguía, member of the Galician Academy, historian, journalist and editor of Rosalía's books. (Her married name was Rosalía Castro de Murguía.) The couple had seven children: Alexandra (1859–1937), Aura (1868–1942), twins Gala (1871–1964) and Ovidio (1871–1900), Amara (1873–1921), Adriano (1875–1876) and Valentina (stillborn, 1877). The only two that married were Aura in 1897 and Gala in 1922; neither they nor their siblings left any children, and thus there are no living descendants of Rosalía de Castro and her husband. Their son Ovidio was a good painter, but his early death cut his career short.

The date she published her first collection of poetry in Galician, Cantares gallegos (gl) ("Galician Songs"), May 17, 1863, is commemorated every year as the Día das Letras Galegas ("Galician Literature Day"), an official holiday of the Autonomous Community of Galicia, and has been dedicated to an important writer in the Galician language since 1963.

Relative poverty and sadness marked her life, although she had a strong sense of commitment to the poor and to the defenseless. She was a strong opponent of abuse of authority and defender of women's rights. She suffered from cancer of the womb and died of this illness. Her image appeared on the 500 peseta Spanish banknote.

Rosalia de Castro is today the unquestioned poet laureate of Galicia (Spain). Highly educated, expected to speak and write Spanish only, she took the bold, unconventional step of writing her early poems in the Galician language. Her defiance earned her the contempt and spite of that segment of the population for whom Galician was a dialect fit only for the illiterate and the churlish; but Rosalía's gallant gesture won her the love and admiration of the rest. Schools in Galicia, in Spain, in Russia and in Uruguay, libraries, cultural associations, awards, parks, folklore groups, choirs, compositions of her poems, a Galician traditional morning song adorned with the lyrics of one of her poems, a professional sports team, monuments at home and abroad, a theater, restaurants, a label of white wine, lodgings, a money bill formerly in circulation, a postage stamp, a FS98 Iberia Airbus A340, a sea-rescue plane, a school train and many streets have all taken her name.

Source: Wikipedia.org
Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]

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